Non-state actors calling the shots

There was time when top government officials determined events in various countries.

At the international level, it was the leaders of master states or powerful countries like the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Japan, or Germany who told the rest of the world what to do.

Since they did not always agree on the orders to give to the others, and tended to quarrel, their disputes split and affected other countries.

Within individual countries, it was the presidents, prime ministers, and ministers who made the decisions that everyone else had to accept.

This has changed, particularly in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Leaders of countries are not any longer the main influence on what happens in the world.

The new determinants are mostly anti-state and they have seemingly made harassing various state their main pre-occupation.

They fall into two categories.

First are those who, starting with a premise that state officials are always wrong, self-righteously claim to be doing good for the masses by repeatedly finding fault in the state.

Second are those who, not interested in the theoretical improvement of the welfare of the masses, concentrate on settling international scores by destabilising the collective sense of security and international order.

In the first category are those anti-state actors who act within and outside state, theoretically in the interest of the people because states had failed to perform.

There is even the paradox of some of these anti-state actors being paid hefty salaries and allowances by the state, often as members of various watchdog commissions.

Having been fished out of the NGO and civil society world, they rarely see the contradiction in their positions.

This is because members of the NGOs and civil society bodies usually receive salaries and operating costs from forces that tend to be foreign and at times hostile to particular states.

Their existence, however, is an indictment to the state for failure to deliver services.

It is this failure that gives opportunity to non-state actors to influence behaviour and to reduce the relevance of state officials.

Although NGOs and civil society entities are influential, it is those settling international security scores that have affected collective behaviour.

They have taken the power to determine lifestyles and collective sense of public security from government officials.

This shift is particularly pronounced in the United States.

For instance, non state actors in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, forced Barack Obama to talk of “irreconcilable truths.”

While receiving the Nobel for “peace”, he tried to invoke the “just war” argument that was at best tenuous.

In part, the anguish is because, like many countries, the United States is caught trying to respond to purported enemies who keep on moving to new conceptual theatres of conflict that had not been thought about.

The consequence is that, in the name of security, life styles are regularly reorganised across the globe to fit the dictates of those actors.

Being made to take off shoes, clothes, and to forgo liquid medicine in international flights became a norm.

And when a Nigerian youth introduced a new level of insecurity at Detroit, installing new gadgets for electronically scrutinizing a passenger’s anatomy were accepted as a security necessity.

This makes George Orwell’s 1984 appear to be simply 25 years late as “big brother” takes over, and privacy is thrown out of the window.

Although Obama denies it, non state actors seem to be calling the shots and it is also happening in other countries as non-state actors force change in lifestyle.

Reputed piracy money from unstable Somalia has increased the level of poverty in Kenya by making property prices beyond the reach of ordinary Kenyans.

The presence of a Jamaican in Kenya led to destructive riots in Nairobi.

The confidence that used to exist in states has disappeared because non-state actors are calling the shots.

Prof Macharia teaches at USIU-Nairobi. gmmunene@usiu.ac.ke